ensures

Let us think of a successful batsman trying to become a Wicket-keeper. He may drop a few catches and will be clumsy at first, but his batsman’s eye helps him anticipate the ball’s trajectory better than a pure keeper. He becomes a more complete player but can never the best keeper in the world. Take the case of Ravi Shastri. In later part of his career, he retained his place in the team for his batting though he was picked in the team initially as a spinner. Despite that Ravi Shastri can never be a Gavaskar or a Tendulkar.

In case of organisations or individuals, when we push into areas where we don’t have a natural edge or stepping away from our core strengths it is like a double-edged sword. It’s the fastest way to feel like a beginner again, which is both humbling and incredibly risky. We get back to basics and re-live the pangs of learning curve Stings. We also  develop an inferiority complex when we realise that the tasks that experts finish in an hour might take us a day or even more. Add to that there is a fat chance that we would face a failure in early attempts, which may end up in denting our confidence in what is known as Competence Gap Friction. What this also means is there is energy drain because a huge extra piece of effort is called for and we will not be in an effortless work mode or flow state. Not just the physical fuel even mental fuel is drained. People (and the organisation) get exhausted much earlier as compared to the time we were playing to our strengths.

If we were a business, moving away from our core can confuse our Consumer or the market. People who considered us for X may be diffident to the extent of being nervous when you start trying to sell them Y. There is also a risk of wrong perception of diluted values in the eyes of our consumer. This phenomenon is experiential. A customer in fact an operational advisor during a review question the scatter of our efforts and dilute value. A greater risk is resource bleed. In our attempt to fix a weakness we may (will) end up expending inordinate amount of both time and money. We cut budgets to nurture or nourish our strengths that actually pay our bills. Strengths gradually wither due to neglect.

Do we end up being a Psychological Imposter? Yes, any diversification, even our strength areas leave alone non-core areas goes through this phase where from being a go-to person, we are treated as a student. Most of the organisations end up feeling that they have lost the spark. Consequently, we end up in an Identity crisis, losing our grip on things that got us on top, in the first place.

It is easy to mistake a lucky break for a winning formula. When we operate outside our core strength, we are more prone to “False Positives” i.e. successes achieved despite our strategy, not because of it. We should exercise extreme cautious of odd successes. Sometimes, entering a new field coincide with a market upswing or a specific trend. Win may not be necessarily because of the strengths; it could well be because the tide lifted all boats. If we double down based on this win, we’ll be devastated when the market stabilizes and our lack of deep expertise is exposed. It is dangerous to rely too much on a Beginner’s luck.

In India, we often hear stories of the one dropout who built a unicorn or the one engineer who became a superstar chef. Remember, for every one person who succeeded outside their core, thousands failed quietly. If our success cannot be replicated through a clear process, it is an outlier, not a strategy. Avoid survivor bias to ensure that we do not concluding based on wrong premise.

We might hit a target (like high sales) but at a cost that is unsustainable. If someone dispassionately digs deep we may find that we spent far more than the usual effort or sacrificed our reputation to get that one “win” in a weak area. Treating this as a success ignores the burnout or brand damage happening behind the scenes.

Finally, tendency to over-index on minimal anecdotal success. A single positive feedback or one big client in a new domain feels like a massive validation. It helps to remember that one data point is a dot; only multiple data points makes a trend. Unless you can show a consistent conversion or retention rates, that one success is just noise.

Not everything is bad. There is an upside to this too. We are forced to build new pathways, leading to lateral thinking and end up discovering an innovative way to apply our strengths in the new domain in a way we could have never imagined before. We also may become less fragile to market changes especially if the core strength is inching (or racing) towards obsolescence.

To conclude, Falling for a Shiny market Object and getting de-focussed is a risk best avoided. Remember, a bigger menu doesn’t necessarily mean it is better. Ensure it is a diversification by design not by chance. Good to ride a high tide, but not to rely on it. And diversifying into too many areas also means it spreads thin, diluting the strength and some strengths slipping away from the grip.